Climate Change – Page 4

Tag Archive for: Climate Change

Agriculture, Environment, Land Management, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

South Sudan: Millions trek home to a delicate environment

With a greater sense of collective security and a fast-growing economy fueled by its budding oil industry, most of The Republic of South Sudan is poised for recovery and development at the onset of nationhood.

Although South Sudan’s slate of challenges are not easily enumerable, issues relating to the environment, including land degradation, deforestation and the impact of climate change, must be addressed with urgency. This constellation of challenges threaten the newly independent nation’s long-term peace and stability, food security and sustainable development.

But an effective response requires copious, accurate and reliable data that isn’t readily available. This paucity of information about South Sudan’s environmental landscape is due to unique factors brought about by the more than two decades long civil war with its now northern neighbor. The war, which ended with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005, displaced nearly a half of the population of 8 million and claimed nearly 2 million lives.

Throughout the years of displacement, previously overgrazed lands and wildlife were naturally replenished to some degree. But as an estimated 4 million people return to their ancestral lands on the cusp of independence in a resource rich but ecologically unsound and economically stagnant society, the natural gains made in restoring the environment is in jeopardy. It would be illogical to suggest that the return of a displaced people is within and of itself the cause of this crisis, rather, it is the lack of information about where people will settle and the state of the environment in those places that is at the core of the problem.

To respond to this challenge, the Government of South Sudan (GoSS) ought to make more coordinated use of the 2005 post-conflict environmental assessment it commissioned UNEP

Photo Credit: Frank Langfitt/NPR

to conduct. The finding from the UNEP study may be transformed into a resource akin to Virtual Kenya, an online interactive web platform for charting human environmental health with related material for those with no access to the internet. This is one tangible way in which ICTs, including GIS technologies may be used to tackle South Sudan’s environmental challenges.

As I’ve noted in previous blogs focused on South Sudan and the role of ICTs, there is limited scope for the use of high tech ICTs at this point, due to systemic and structural impediments, including literacy, connectivity, access and market environment. However, traditional technologies such as radio ought to be used to provide timely, accurate and contextually appropriate information about environmental conservation. It is important that the farming community, the largest economically active block in the country, be sensitized about this. Land degradation, for instance, is heightened by population pressure, intensification of agriculture, water-logging and salinity, among other things. Both water-logging and salinity are caused by poor irrigation and drainage, deforestation, overgrazing, soil erosion and poverty.

So, as South Sudan claims nationhood, it is imperative that the environment be a priority for the GoSS and its people. A clear ICT strategy with medium to long-term goals is needed. It ought to emphasize how ICTs will be leveraged to improve basic farm extension services to reduce poor soil management, and other agricultural related causes of land degradation. The wider thrust to sensitize the nation about environmental issues ought to also prioritize the well-being of wildlife, much of which was devastated during the war. There is clear economic, environmental and social benefits to be reaped from this.

As with so many nations on the cusp of self-determination, South Sudan can take a path that will secure the fortunes of its people. The preservation of the environment is central to achieving this, and that is only possible if there is national buy-in. Too few governments have been proactive in informing their citizens.

July 8, 2011/by actualize

Environment, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Global Symposium on ICT and Climate Change

Ghana and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) will host the Global Symposium on ICTs, the Environment and Climate Change in Accra this July.

The Symposium will focus on the needs of the developing world, which will be disproportionately impacted by climate change. A slate of leading specialists in the communications industry, top policymakers, engineers, designers, planner and regulators will discuss issues of climate change mitigation and adaptation, e-waste, disaster planning, cost-effective ICTs, and the challenges and opportunities posted by transitioning to a green economy.

The symposium’s recommendations regarding ICTs, the environment and climate change is likely to contribute to the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD 2012 or Rio+20).

ICTs such as satellites, mobile phones and the internet play a key role in addressing the challenges associated with climate change and sustainable development.

July 5, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Climate Change, Environment, Environmental Compliance, Food Security, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Sustainable Agriculture

NOAA Pilots GIS Project in West Africa: A Boost for Sustainable Agriculture

Climate change is already posing challenges to agricultural productivity worldwide, and the sector is likely to encounter severe water woes as this intensifies. However, water management, which is crucial for sustainable agriculture, improved rural livelihoods and food security, has not yet been sufficiently harnessed and employed across Sub-Saharan Africa.

Consequently, immense opportunities for growth and economic

Picture showing an irrigation system- green plants being watered.

Credit: A Guide To Irrigation Methods — Irrigation Systems

advancement are being missed. Proper irrigation is vital for sustained agricultural growth, according to the FAO. The UN agency says efficient irrigation practices could result in increased crop yields of up to 400%. Yet, farmers across Sub-Saharan Africa, who are most dependent on rainfall, are hamstrung by a landscape with the fewest rainfall monitoring stations in the world, which are also complicated to read. This challenge is compounded by an unreliable climate information dissemination mechanism.

But, as with all challenges in the sector, new technologies are emerging that could provide better information for planning. Rainwatch, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) funded climate information system, seems set to help West African farmers, in particular, to overcome their water management challenges.

NOAA says Rainwatch uses GIS to “monitor monsoon rainfall and tracks season rainfall attributes”. It automatically streamlines rainfall data management, processing and visualization. The user-firendly tool has interactive faces, symbols and self-explanatory names. This simplicity eliminates the need for external assistance, including satellite information, to make use of the tool.

The successful 2009 piloting of the project, coupled with the abundant returns to farmers in Niger last year, a country with chronic water management issues, shows that there is great potential behind scaling-up this project. A key challenge will be getting farmers to use the technology, but the demonstrable benefits will prove to be a strong selling point.

The NOAA funded project received support from the African Center of Meteorological Applications for Development and CIMMS.

June 16, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Climate Change, Extension Service, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Seasonal climate forecasts possible in Africa but not helping yet – study

An Egyptian rice farmer shows his drought damaged rice crop in a village near Balqis on June 14, 2008. REUTERS/Nasser Nuri

LONDON (AlertNet) – For African farmers struggling to cope with increasingly erratic conditions linked to climate change, there’s good – and bad – news.

The good news is that in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, scientists can now issue reasonably reliable seasonal climate forecasts a month or more in advance of the planting season, giving growers a chance to opt for different kinds of crops or other measures to adapt to upcoming conditions.

That has the potential to improve food security in many climate-vulnerable parts of Africa, and reduce the impact on some of the world’s poorest people of droughts, floods and temperature surges.

The bad news is that those forecasts, and other historical weather information farmers need to judge risk and make good decisions, still are not reaching most growers, in part because meteorological data in many African countries is available only at a cost.

Weather information “is an essential resource for adaptation (to climate change) and development,” said James W. Hansen, a researcher on climate change, agriculture and food security at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and lead author of a new report on seasonal climate forecasting and agriculture in Africa.

But “as long as these (data) are seen as a revenue source for Met services rather than as a public good for development, the people who are most affected by climate change, climate variability and poverty won’t have much access to innovations,” he said in a telephone interview.

Growing climate variability is making life increasingly difficult for farmers throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Some areas, particularly in southern and eastern Africa, are seeing extended droughts and high temperatures that can make growing staples like maize a challenge. Other regions, including parts of West Africa, have struggled with extreme rainfall.

Altogether “dependence on uncertain rainfall and exposure to climate risk characterize the livelihoods of roughly 70 percent of (sub-Saharan Africa’s) population,” notes the study, published in the journal Experimental Agriculture in March.

SOME PREDICTABLE REGIONS

But scientists are getting increasingly good at predicting seasonal climate conditions in advance, largely because of growing understanding of how Pacific Ocean temperatures – linked to weather phenomena like El Nino and La Nina – influence rainfall in sub-Saharan Africa.

While it is still very difficult to predict seasonal conditions in some parts of Africa – including across the Sahara and the northern parts of the Sahel – other areas are showing potential for predictability, at least in some seasons. They include much of southern Africa up to southern Zambia; a swath of East Africa centered on Kenya; a wide band of West Africa reaching from the Atlantic coast across to Sudan; and a stretch of west-central Africa from the Atlantic coast into the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Already, “skillful forecasts can be produced more than a month before the normal start of the growing season for the short rains in eastern Africa and the main rainy season in southern Africa,” the study noted.

Just as important, the regional forecasts can be “downscaled” to provide more specific local forecasts with only “modest” loss of accuracy, the study said.

So why aren’t seasonal forecasts yet reaching farmers, particularly given that studies show most are eager to get and act on the information?

Largely it’s the result of communication failures, Hansen said. Meteorologists in many regions tend to oversimplify forecasts, telling farmers there will be higher rainfall, for instance, rather than a 60 percent chance of higher than normal rainfall.

That has led to a lack of trust, particularly when oversimplified predictions don’t come true.

“If I were a smallholder farmer and a climate scientists said it would be more or less rainy, I’d be extremely skeptical. A lot would depend on how much I trust that person,” Hansen noted.

The reality is “farmers understand probability very well. Their lives depend on it,” he said. Leaving the probabilities off forecasts undermines trust and reliability, he said.

But perhaps the most severe problem, he said, is that many African meteorological services see weather data as something to be sold to paying clients – airports, insurance firms, development organizations – rather than released as a public good.

That view is in part the result of structural reforms driven by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, aimed at reducing the hand of governments – often seen as corrupt or inefficient – in services including meteorology, Hansen said. The reforms left many meteorological services dependent on commercial sales of data for funding, he said, a model that is providing difficult to change.

CHANGING THE FUNDING MODEL

Still, efforts are underway. An initiative in Kenya called WIND – Weather Information for Development – aims to help Kenya’s meteorological service find new sources of revenue and make better decisions about what data should be commercialized and what made publicly available free.

In other countries, researchers hope to tempt government meteorological services into releasing satellite data free in exchange for access to information from ground weather stations runs by research organizations.

“If we can get one or two (countries) to break out, and they get new visibility and funding, maybe there can be a domino effect,” Hansen said.

Better seasonal climate forecasts won’t help ease surging food prices around the world, because the surges are driven by rising demand, the scientist warned.

But in some of the poorest parts of the world, good seasonal climate forecasts have the potential to help curb hunger, protect incomes and get some of the world’s most climate-vulnerable people through bad years.

“The ability to anticipate climate fluctuations and their impact on agriculture months in advance should, in principle, enable… opportunities to manage risk,” the study noted.

May 4, 2011/by actualize

Environment, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Microchips Track Amazonian Trees to Support Sustainable Forestry Practices

A technician reads information, transmitted from a microchip attached to a tree, with his GPS device during a presentation of the Monitoring System Electronic Tracking and Forestry project in Nova Mutum in Mato Grosso state, August 28, 2010.

The identifiable roar of a chainsaw brings a gigantic Amazonian tree in Nova Mutum, Brazil to the forest floor.

This could be any other other day in the South American country where trees fall frequently each year in Brazil’s portion of the world’s largest forest. There is only one small detail that makes this one a little different: it is a “smart” tree; a microchip is attached to its base and contains data about its location, size and who cut it down. Each microchip tells the story of the individual tree’s life, from the point that it landed on the ground to the sawmill that processed and sold the wood, it has key information for buyers who want to know where it came from.

Though it is only a small pilot project, its leaders say the microchip system has the potential to be a big step forward in the battle to protect the Amazon. The chips allow land owners using sustainable forestry practices to distinguish their wood from that acquired through illegal logging that destroys swathes of the forest each year. Forestry engineer Paulo Borges from the organization Acao Verde, or Green action, which manages the project on a large farm, remarks:

People talk a lot these days about wood coming from sustainable forestry practices — this is a system that can prove it…

Brazil is under international pressure to reduce deforestation that destroys thousands of square miles of the Amazon each year, making the country one of the world’s biggest sources of greenhouse gasses. The project is part of a growing trend toward lumber certification that gives buyers a guarantee the wood was produced without damaging the forest it came from. Acao Verde says widespread use of chips in trees would help eliminate corruption that allows illegally harvested wood to be “cleaned up” through bogus certification papers, and aid in spurring Brazil’s sustainable forestry movement. Similar projects in Bolivia and Nigeria use technology such as bar codes readers or satellite tracking to help crack down on illegal logging and preserve delicate ecosystems. Acao Verde collected data on trees in 100 hectares (247 acres) of forest on the Caranda farm, which produces soy and corn but maintains native vegetation on a third of the land as required by law.

Forestry engineers attach chips contained in white plastic squares similar to office I.D. cards to each tree.

Landowners who adopt the system could cut down on time-consuming paperwork and reduce the need for inspections by environmental authorities, which for years have had tense relations with agribusiness in the region. Patrik Lunardi, 26, whose family allowed the project to be carried out on their farm see the chips as a transparent way to show their sustainable farming techniques: